Abstract and Key Words

Abstract: Catherine，the heroine in the novel A Farewell to Arms, is the most controversial female of Ernest Hemingway’s fictional characters. Different critics start from different points of view, and analyze the character in different ways, thereby they draw very different conclusions. This article summarizes Catherine’s changes both in physiology and psychology before and after the war. It also analyses the main reasons for the series of changes in Catherine. Thereby the article draws the conclusion that the war is the source of every tragedy and Catherine is the victim of the war, which provides a new understanding of Catherine’s image from different perspective.

Key words: A Farewell to Arms, Catherine, War, Victim

摘要：小说《永别了，武器》中的女主角凯瑟琳是海明威创作的众多人物中引发争论最多的一位女性，不同的评论家从不同的视角出发，对其进行了解读，从而得出了不同的结论。本文总结了女主人公在战争前后生理上和心理上的变化，同时分析了造成这一系列变化的主要原因。从而得出凯瑟琳是战争的牺牲品这一结论，使人们对女主人公凯瑟琳的形象从不同的角度有了重新的认识。

关键词：《永别了，武器》，凯瑟琳，战争，牺牲品

1.    Introduction
1.1 Introduction of A Farewell to Arms
Hemingway (1899-1961) is an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His works during the 1920s are the representative of the expression of "the Lost Generation" --young people who were disillusioned and frustrated with the war and were spiritually bitter and aimless in life. He led a turbulent social life, married four times, and allegedly had various romantic relationships during his lifetime. As a serious writer, he achieved a rare cult-like popularity during his lifetime. Hemingway received the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. During his later life, Hemingway suffered from increasing physical ailments and emotional breakdowns. In July, 1961, he committed suicide by shooting himself.
A Farewell to Arms is one of the most important war works of Hemingway. This novel tells about the story of Henry, an American lieutenant in the Italian Ambulance Service during World War I, who falls in love with an English nurse, Catherine. When Henry, wounded during a bombardment, is sent to a hospital at Milan, Catherine comes to nurse him. They spend a happy summer together. Soon Catherine is pregnant. Henry returns to his post, finds his comrade Rinaldi depressed by the horrors of the war, and shares with him the suffering during the disastrous retreat. Knowing that Catherine has been transferred to Stresa, he goes there in civilian clothes to meet her. But he is suspected as deserter and forced to flee with Catherine to Switzerland where they wait for the birth of their child. But both mother and baby die in dystocia, leaving Henry desolate and alone in a strange land. The tragic love between Henry and Catherine reveals that the wound, both mental and physical, inflicted on the young by that absurd war hardly be healed.